You may never have considered the importance of knowing how to remove a DisplayPort cable. But there will be times when this may be important, for example, if you've decided to upgrade your hardware. The last thing you want to do is risk damaging either your output connector or your cable.
With that in mind, here's everything you need to know about removing a DisplayPort connection.
How To Remove DisplayPort Cable
You may be thinking to yourself, 'it's just a cable, surely you just unplug it, and that's it?'. Which, if your previous experience has been with USB cables, HDMI cables, and Scart connections, would be a reasonable assumption.
But DisplayPort does work slightly differently, and simply trying to pull out the cable is liable to cause some damage. This is due to the specific way that many DisplayPort cables are designed.
If you look carefully at the connector, you may notice that there is a button on it. This is because DisplayPort cables use a locking connector. Pressing the button will release the lock, allowing you to gently and easily remove the cable.
It's extremely important that you don't attempt to remove the cable using brute force. If you do, you could risk damaging several of your components. If you trash something like your GPU, that's a potentially costly mistake to rectify.
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Why Do DisplayPort Cables Have a Locking Mechanism?
Quite simply, this is down to ensuring the connection doesn't come loose. A loose connection can cause issues such as flickering, so a lock is a relatively simple way to keep the connection as secure as possible.
Of course, it does mean that if the cable gets caught in your foot, for example, there is a higher risk of pulling your cable and whatever it's connected to, rather than the cable simply disconnecting. So it's good practice to ensure that your setup keeps the cables out of the way, to minimise the risk of any unwanted entanglement.
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It's also worth noting that some DisplayPort cables (usually at the cheaper end of the spectrum) don't come with the locking mechanism. If that's the case, then these will normally detach without needing to push down on a release button. But check carefully to see whether or not that's the case for you.
And that's it! A really simple way to remove a DisplayPort cable. Once you know how, of course.
What If The Release Button Is Broken?
Well, this certainly complicates matters. In many cases, it might just be the case that the button is very stiff, and requires you to push harder than you might expect to release it.
But if the button is definitely broken, some DisplayPort users have reported that they have been able to release the cable and then use some needle nose pliers to activate the release mechanism. It's a fiddly job, but if your cable is broken anyway, this might be worth trying. It's certainly better than trying to rip the cable out.